Have you ever craved a piece of chocolate, finally eaten it, and then immediately wondered or even regretted why you did?

Or promised yourself “just one piece”, only to end up eating the entire bar?

Why does that happen?

Is it really a lack of discipline? And most importantly.. can this be influenced, and if so, how?

My main motivation is to write down my critical thoughts connected with fundamental scientific background facts about happenings and things I’m witnessing during my travels and everyday life. Sometimes I’m really faced with that kind of urge to put down my observations into an article while watching people and their behaviors in coffee shops, buses etc., but in parallel I’m also a victim of my own structured self which forces me to introduce a few general theories I’ll refer to in the upcoming articles, to set the baseline of understanding here.

Basically, almost every topic I’ll discuss in this blog finds one common denominator – it’s our nervous system. And I want to highlight that the topics in my blog concern all of us and it’s not just about self-development, self-optimization and the search of purpose. Dealing with the maze of self means taking care of our nervous system which has a tremendous influence not only on our mental health but health in general. It is already proven that changes in our lifestyles can have a crucial influence on the susceptibility to chronic diseases. Hence, it shows how effective, powerful and important the work on the system is. As I’m not a medical professional and you’ll find more detailed information elsewhere, I just stick to the most important things, explain it from my understanding aiming at applicable knowledge for daily application.

Nothing less than everything we feel, think, remember and imagine happens in our nervous systems as it consists of the brain, our spinal cord and most importantly the neural connections between these two and all of our organs. The nervous system, and its continuous communication loop between the mentioned vital components, influences for instance immune functions of our body. Beside those “inner” tasks, there’re way more obvious occurrences in our daily life which have their roots in the nervous system. Abruptly appearing nausea, sweating, trembling or similar symptoms during or even before a discussion or an altercation in a relationship are initiated by the nerve system. A concrete example, where several symptoms could appear combined, is stage fright – sweaty palms, shaking voice, and several more. It seems that we’re threatened by the audience and something very bad will happen if we fail. There’s a multitude of examples for these appearances of the nervous system in our daily life and most of them are factually unfounded as they’re based on some outdated beliefs and convictions. That’s the most suspenseful fact here – we can regulate and reshape those unneeded mechanisms through the work on our nervous systems achieving an immense improvement on regulation and reactivity of these uncomfortable everyday situations.

In summary it is not exaggerated to say that the nervous system governs all other biological systems of the body. The possibility to influence that sovereign system so easily through our lifestyle gives us a really decisive lever. Beside the already mentioned, the system takes care of our whole experience of life talking about sensation. Neurons in the eyes are responsible for seeing, neural cells in the skin allow us to touch things and the like. Our spotlight of perception and the focus we’re setting our attention on is directly connected to the nervous system. We can influence that effectively by changing our everyday habits. Additionally feelings and emotions, which are often meant to be not in our control, are products of our nervous systems and can indeed be influenced partially. Connecting perceptions with context from the past and the future to generate thoughts out of them, is part of the system as well. Enhancing our nervous system could lead to a less reflexive and impulsive behavior concerning our thoughts. A really untrained nervous system would for instance directly follow an obviously baiting pop-up window of your browser whereas the ability to engage in deliberate, controlled thinking increases, if your nervous system is in an advanced condition (“I’m reading that insightful blog article now.”). That has for sure direct influence on our actions and behaviors. Children, with their immature nervous systems, for instance follow their impulses mostly directly and tend to act irresponsibly sometimes from an adult perspective.

today’s reflection

Identify one annoying or unfounded appearance of your nervous system in your daily life. Go into it, identify the trigger, accept the physical signs and take yourself some moments to think about a potential root or origin of that behavior. Where do you think this reaction comes from? In most cases there’s a deeper longing behind the nervous system response – an unfulfilled need. If you’re able to identify that, you could interact towards satisfying that need which would let your reaction ease up in future.